In a move to step up its social feature repertoire, Google Inc., released its new social media product, Buzz, this week. This new networking tool that mixes some of the programs Google has created over the years and could prove very useful for journalists, according to Poynter Online.

However, these enhanced capabilities could come at a price for news outlets.

On its blog, Google said Buzz is a "new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting." The feature is built right into Gmail, which means you do not need to create a whole new list of contacts. Buzz brings this network to the surface "by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat the most." The feature gives users an "easy-to use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos, and links."

Building a friends list might be easier with Buzz because it integrates information from your Gmail contacts, but this same simplicity might cause you to end up sharing pictures from your latest holiday in Mexico with your boss or your college professor, contacts you email frequently.

Buzz; however, affirms that you can share easily either "publicly or privately."

The Buzz experience can also be taken with you everywhere, on your mobile phone. This adds another interesting layer to the experience: location. According to the Google blog, users can post updates to Buzz with their geographic location in the end.

Poynter Online's Will Sullivan sees Buzz as a "Facebook-foursquare-Twitter-FriendFeed competitor" that could be much more than that with the sum of Google products that are being incorporated into it. Some of those products include Google Profiles, Gmail, Google Picasa photos (as well as Flickr), Google Voice & Talk, and Google Wave, Google's real-time updating, commenting, sharing tool.

Sullivan explains that certain features on the Buzz that could have interesting implications for journalists, more than anything in breaking news and mobile advertising.

Sullivan believes Google Latitude, which is Google's live GPS location tracking cool is not too impressive on its own, but with "an active audience of participants" through Gmail contacts, this technology makes Google Buzz more relevant.

Google's Buzz integration of Google Maps also makes this new product unique because it visually "displays what we're used to seeing in long linear lists on Twitter and Facebook."

A scroll down your local map allows you to see who has sent updates around you, down to the city block level. Sullivan calls this "the best live implementation I've seen of a real-time geotagged social media experience."

With detailed user profiles, their social network and precise location, "Google could do what futurists have been dreaming about: offering relevant, interest-driven mobile advertising, geo-targeted down to the micro level."

Sullivan believes the mobile version of Buzz brings "the experience of the Internet" to mobiles.

The capability to explore what people around a certain place are doing or thinking or talking about has applications in breaking news situations to reach people who are physically located near news events, as well as getting in contact with them easily.

Google Search's algorithm that filters information for relevance will also be incorporated into Buzz, so the feature will learn about your personal interests and allow you to hide or approve of news and social content that interests users, further personalizing a user's experience with the product.

But, not all of Buzz's features can benefit newspapers. In fact, Sullivan believes that Google's AdSense is "the most dangerous element for media organizations" because it could pose a threat to micro-payments and highly-targeted advertising model.

With detailed profiles of what a user likes, dislikes, who users talk about, and where they go most often, Google could ooffer relevant, local, interest-driven, geo-targeted, mobile advertising. This could take away important revenue for hyperlocal news ventures, such as EveryBlock.

Google, currently mired in controversy regarding its effect on newspapers through its Google News aggregator, could compete with both local papers and social networks with the Buzz - that is if enough people begin to use it.

Google's new venture highlights the importance of the integration of a number of important elements - real, live updates, social network, geotagging, and hyperlocal information - in launching new products. Google's own algorithms allow Buzz to have an important function, that of filtering through users' likes and dislikes to provide customized information.

Just recently, Google News also launched a new application that allows users to further customize their browsing experience by starring the stories they feel are more interesting.